Sunday, June 21, 2015

Your potential is not your ability to chair meetings, shake hands or use appropriately and without sarcasm the term 'touch base'. You are more than the emails you send and the work plan written out for you. You, the worker. The worker of modern times whose back is curved and muscles are slack. The worker who must find time in the day for exercise. Once upon a time we worked for our food in a literal sense and a person who ran to run did not exist, at least to my knowledge.

You are more than a worker and what you do forty hours of the week. You are worth more than what you are paid, are more than your title. You are a person. You work with and for other people. We are people first. When did we all forget that?

When did we arrive here at this sterile adult playground? Who decided everything? I want a word. That word is no. No to living life half asleep full time or being a part time full force in the wrong direction. Explorers who charge on, oblivious of their oblivion. Ignorant of their ignorance. Senses numbed but ambition heightened.

You the worker who comes alive two out of the seven days of the week. And even if you like your job. Even if you love your job. You are still more than your work. Don't forget that. Never forget that. Work hard sure, love your work, sure but do not for a moment believe that that is all you are.

Remember the value of human relationships and remember to keep coming back to what a small space you, we, all of us, occupy in the world. The moment you forget that you will be sucked into a black hole of solipsism and a vague half-emptiness from which you will spend your entire life trying to get out of or fill in.

You are a soul and a body and a mind that is made of stardust. You pulse and thirst and have hunger; you can be broken and can break things and people and have a potential of which you know not the limits. You cannot do anything, be anything but surely you can be many things, do many things or perhaps one thing exceptionally. Get to know your potential outside of your resume. Understand who you are when you are not working to the plan set out for you. Do you know what you want your own life to be, ultimately? When your soul is released and your body pulseless, when the stardust you were returns to the stardust of the earth? That'll get you started.